Some numbers are constants, a fixed numeric value established by physics, mathematics, geometry, law, literature, or logic.  They never change.  Take for example π (pi, 3.1416), the Ten Commandments, the Three Musketeers, 12 inches in a foot, and 11 million illegal aliens.

That's right: eleven million illegal aliens in the United States.  In recent years we have seen once immutable values changed before our eyes — nine planets, two sexes, and more.  But since 2003, the number of unauthorized aliens present, illegally (need to emphasize that), in our supposedly sovereign nation has been wired in at 11 million.  With little sense of media curiosity, or fact-checking, that number, primarily sourced by a left-leaning research group (Pew) and copied by others, has remained a constant.

For nearly two decades now, we must believe that the waves of unconstrained illegal entries in the Bush and Obama years, the unenforced overstays, and the catch-and-release judicial free passes have not altered the number one digit.  Pew, the Census Bureau, even some supposedly anti-immigration groups like the Center for Immigration Studies, suggest that the mostly unchecked inflow has somehow been balanced by some unknown depopulation.  We must have missed the plague that has selectively decimated the illegal populace or the traffic jams that choked the southbound Rio Grande bridges.

With Joe Biden now in the White House, probably wondering where, and the open-borders Democrats in complete control of the government, that supposedly fixed number of illegal aliens has now become a coefficient for legislative policy and executive action.  The Democrat puppeteers who pull Biden's strings are going to make them all citizens — vote-wielding, job-stealing, crime-concealing, welfare-dealing citizens.  That's 11 million of them, the eighth largest state, matching Ohio's 18 Electoral College votes.  That's what's coming, and there's not much you can do about it.

Bad as that outcome may seem, it will probably be much worse.  Credible analyses, using additional and more reliable data, have computed estimates of 20 million and more likely 25–30 million illegals already inside the borders.  And even that could be low.  Liberal judges have decreed that you can't even ask one's citizen status on the Census questionnaire.

The Census and Pew use methodology that would embarrass an honest statistician.  It goes like this: the number of illegal aliens equals the total number of immigrants and aliens minus the number of immigrants amd legal aliens.  But since we don't know the number of total immigrants because it includes an unknown number of illegal aliens, we'll make a guess.  The fancy name for this process is called the "Residual Method of Estimation."  Real people and third-grade arithmetic students would call it "a guess" — better, a WAG.

As the Biden kakistocracy rushes recklessly and gleefully into this new amnesty, let history provide a lesson.  The last amnesty was in the Reagan era, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986.  The now defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials tasked with implementing the IRCA later testified they used the congressional claim of 800,000–1 million illegals assumed present for amnesty.  Then they conservatively planned for up to 1.5 million applicants.  The INS manager was later quoted, "[The actual] 3.1 million applicants overall, blew our minds.  The fraud in that program was out of sight!"  Two point seven million eventually received amnesty, over three times the original lawmakers' estimates.  So, will the immutable 11 million candidates for amnesty today morph into 30-plus million applicants tomorrow?  There is that precedent.

Under the dictatorial Biden regime, there is probably not much we can do to stop this next diminution of democracy and law.  Soon there will be millions of new voters in line with us at the polls or trying to jam handfuls of harvested ballots into the unguarded mailbox.  A positive note — there won't be a need for massive vote fraud anymore.

But maybe we can try to limit the damage.  If Biden, Pew, the media, and the Democrats insist that there are only those immutable 11 million illegals, then let's limit amnesty and citizenship to that, exactly 11 million.  Put it in the law.  Not a single one more.  The excess, we are assured, doesn't exist, so let's deport them when they come in for their naturalization certificates and voter registration cards.

As the Biden amnesty works its unimpeded way toward reality, there is a deafening silence from the Republican establishment and elites.  Many of them are of like mind with regard to open borders and the cheap labor that their corporate and Chamber of Commerce donors relish.  Ensconced in their political ramparts and secure in their gated communities, the plight of the American carpenter or the rocket scientist who will be replaced by the tens of millions of manufactured citizens is not of their concern.

The American people once thought there were only two sexes and that the science backed them up.  Soon they will learn that there aren't just 11 million illegal aliens hiding in the shadows, but multiples more, about to push them aside at the workplace, the polling place, their living space, and every facet of their lives and livelihoods.

Another numeric constant fades away for political expediency and advantage, and the ruling class doesn't care.  What's next?  Eleven in a dozen?  Binary means 3?  π = 2.36?

My two cents' worth.  Uh, make that three.

William Campenni is a retired engineer and Air Force fighter pilot who writes about things that really bug him, of which there is no short supply.

Graphic credit: Ilovepiday, CC BY-SA 4.0 license.